22 May 2010

Good News

I expect that, even in foreign parts, friends may have read of a piece of good news to emerge from the British General Election. One of our Oxford MPs (City of Oxford; the University Members were abolished half a century ago), Dr Evan Harris, was defeated by a very narrow margin.

This could hardly fail to be good news, whoever defeated him. He is one of the best-known adherents of the Death Cause in English politics (he could justly take upon his lips C S Lewis's neat imitatio cum variatione of a biblical phrase: "I have come that you might have Death, and have it more abundantly"). He is particularly enthusiastic about abortion.

I once asked him: "We Christians can't always vote for somebody who is soundly with us on Life and moral issues; often it is a matter of voting for the lesser of the evils. So that I can estimate how extreme a pro-abortionist you are, could you answer this: would you be in favour of rules providing that, when a foetus very nearly at full term, with its nervous system fully capable of feeling pain, is to be killed, it should first be anaesthetised, before being dismembered or having its cranium opened for its brain to be vacuumed out?"

He looked me straight in the eye and replied "Not if it might upset the woman".

He was defeated by a woman with evangelical Christian antecedents. There is a very real possibility that Christian votes helped to achieve this. Deo et Deiparae Virgini gratias.

2 comments:

I have been bitterly disappointed by politicians calling themselves prolife, but this is an encouraging result. Hard to imagine how such cold-blooded people as the former Member could have any credibility at all.

I agree with you totally about this excellent result. But why do you call the lady who won the seat "a woman with evangelical Christian antecedents" and not simply, as she would doubtless call herself, "an evangelical Christian"?

Fr John Hunwicke

was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. He is now incardinated into the Personal Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham. The opinions expressed on this Blog are not asserted as being those of the Magisterium of the Church, but as the writer's opinions as a private individual. Nevertheless, the writer strives, hopes, and prays that the views he expresses are conformable with and supportive of the Magisterium. Nothing on this site is to be taken as representing the views of the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham, or of any part of it.